The Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) launched its 100th satellite into orbit today. The Cartosat-2 series satellite took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota at 9:30AM on Friday. It is a follow-on mission with the prime objective of providing high-resolution scene-specific spot imagery.

The 100th mission is the 42nd flight of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C40). It is carrying the 710 kg Cartosat-2 series satellite which consists of special panchromatic and multi-spectral cameras operating in time delay integration mode to deliver high-resolution data.

The high-resolution imagery from the satellite will be used for cartographic applications, urban and rural applications, coastal land use and regulation, utility management like road network monitoring, water distribution, creation of land use maps, change detection to bring out geographical and manmade features and various other Land Information System (LIS) as well as Geographical Information System (GIS) applications.

It is the third satellite from the Cartosat-2 series. As per a report by Business Standard, the rocket carries the Cartosat-2 series satellite for earth observation along with 30 co-passenger satellites. The co-passenger satellites include one microsatellite and one nanosatellite from India, along with three microsatellites and 25 nanosatellites from six countries including Canada, Finland, France, the Republic of Korea, UK, and the US. The total weight of the satellites carried onboard the PSLV-C40 is close to 1,323 kg.

The launch follows the failed August 31 mission where after a stable launch, the backup navigation satellite IRNSS-1H PSLV-39 suffered from a technical fault in its final leg and could not be put back in orbit. It is because of the failure that ISRO took more time for the PSLV-C40 launch.

Following the successful launch of today’s PSLV-C40, ISRO officials congratulated the team to have executed the mission in a short span of time even after failure. The team is confident that after last year’s failure, 2018 will see four key missions in the near future.

ISRO said that it will be launching 30 new satellites in the coming days. By the end of June, ISRO would have 250 successive deployments.